Ep. 10: 'Woke is dangerous thought-control': Scholar Helen Pluckrose

Today, I speak with Helen Pluckrose, author of the new book Cynical Theories and an anti-woke scholar who was part of a team that composed fake papers to highlight poor scholarship across academic fields.

They created these bogus academic papers on things like dogs engage in rape culture, men can cure their transphobia by inserting something up their back passage and that mein kampf be translated using feminist language. Many of these hoax papers were indeed published by leading journals, leaving them red-faced both metaphorically and politically. Communism joke there…

In the wake of the J.K. Rowling trans debate and the hijacking of the Black Lives Matter movement by anti-Zionist organisations, Helen talks to me about the dangers of woke culture and the hierarchy it creates between different groups. She says the woke or social justice system places trans and certain races at the top, with Jews - like myself – firmly at the bottom, just below women, gay men and lesbians, who are increasingly getting a rough time. In the past few days we’ve had UK grime music star Wiley tweeting incessantly about how the Jews are slippery and lots of other horrible stuff…I very nearly had him on this podcast and was even waiting in the Zoom call – but he didn’t show up.

If you like this kind of thinking by rational guests, try my episodes with James Lindsay, Daniel Finkelstein and Helen Lewis. They're all a little different, but super intelligent.